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interesting article

The Met seems to be attracting its share of controversy these days, first for opening with a non-traditional Tosca and more recently for the version in which it presented The Tales of Hoffmann. I didn’t see either production, so I’m not about to take sides here. But regardless of how effective the productions may or may not have been, I was dismayed when naysayers invoked something along the lines of “the composer’s intent.” I was glad to see this recent piece for the New York Times, in which Anthony Tommassini reminds us that strict suppositions about “the composer’s intent,” particularly those informed more by the manuscript page than the present-day stage, would have baffled most of the composers we seek to “protect” from interpretation.